Sparrowhawk

by Thomas A Easton

  It was his own design. It really was. And it was a success. He had doubted its appeal, but his friends were very interested in it.

  No, not friends. They weren’t. They couldn’t be. Masters. They were masters. They had gotten him in their grip and encouraged him and stroked his ego until he would do whatever they wished. And he had.

  He had.

  His vision blurred as saltwater brimmed his eyelids and spilled to run down his cheeks. Drops landed in the aquarium, splashed, and marked the front of his shirt with further droplets. His breathing grew deeper and more ragged.

  Emily, he thought, had brought that cop, that Fischer, to the lab. They had conspired to spoil his dreams of fame and wealth long before he had done anything himself. He had not known it then, but when his masters told him what to do, they had been giving him the opportunity for justice. He wished he had succeeded. Then the cop would have vanished. He thought of Gelarean’s house. And he would now be safe and looking forward to a mansion of his own.

  He could, he knew, escape, even at this late moment. Even if his jellyfish had too few brains to offer him a tentacle. He could offer it a hand. He could reach into the aquarium, fondle it, let it discharge its cnidoblasts, its stingers full of heroin, into his skin. He was no addict. He wasn’t used to the narcotic. There might even be enough, if he just left his hand in the water, to take him far away, forever.

  Or he could get up again, and return the aquarium to its shelf, and reassemble its pump and light. He could go into the other room, where the terrarium was, and select a snake or two. Pale and potent, full of heroin and other drugs. Or there was a nettle on the kitchen windowsill. He didn’t use it, except by accident, when he was watering it and his skin brushed a leaf, but it was there.

  But snakes and nettles were too much trouble. Oblivion was close enough within his reach as he sat there, the aquarium on his lap.

  He stiffened and looked up. Was that the sound of a jet close overhead? The rush of air over wings arched to brake? A shadow moving swiftly past his window?

  He sighed and returned his gaze to the genimal within the tank. Something had indeed landed outside his building. Not hard by his door, not quite, but a little down the block. He heard the ripping sound made by a bird’s—a Hawk’s—claws as it walked on turf, the clap of the vehicle’s closing door, voices with familiar rings, footsteps on the walk outside.

  He raised a hand and stared at it as if he had never seen it before. He turned it back and forth, noting the soft brownness of the skin, the wrinkled folds that let the skin slide and stretch over the knuckles, the nails, the hairs, the lines. In a moment…

  The voices had stopped. The lobby buzzer sounded. There was silence, and then there were footsteps on the stairs, drawing nearer.

  The footsteps stopped. He stared at the aquarium and his jellyfish. He felt for the first time the coolness of the water that had soaked his lap.

  His doorbell rang, and his hand, that marvelous structure of sliding tendons and folding bones and stretching skin, his hand began to tremble.

  “Ralph?” It was Emily. And with her…

  He sighed. He lowered his hand into the water.

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-One

  EMILY HAD NEVER been in a Hawk before, but the layout of the pilot’s pod did not surprise her except in one thing. The clear bubble of the pod itself she had been able to see from the outside, and the single pilot’s seat within it. The control panel was clearly a control panel, though it had a few knobs and buttons that the Tortoise lacked. But when Bernie had said a Hawk could carry two people, or even more if they were not large, she had expected to find a small seat or bench beside his own.

  But there was no room for such a thing. The pod was narrower than she had thought, and the passenger seat was a tiny shelf in the narrow space behind the pilot. “That’s it,” he said when she saw it for the first time. She was hesitating, wondering whether she really wanted to go with him while he chased down Chowdhury. But the hesitation was only brief. She squeezed into the niche, folded herself as comfortably as possible, and said, “Let’s go.”

  The Hawk was clearly designed to function best with only one aboard. It spread its wings, the engine roared, and it lifted from the Neoform parking lot. But its takeoff was not the elegant, assertive leap into the sky she had watched before. With her aboard, the small jet was slower, struggling, lifting off the pavement and climbing at a shallow angle like some ancient mechanical airplane straining to escape the bonds of gravity.

  Like that ancient airplane, once aloft the Hawk had no trouble. She peered through the sides of the pod, past the arch of wing, or she knelt to look over Bernie’s shoulder and see ahead. When her breath ruffed his hair, and his scent rose to her nostrils and the tears to her eyes, he took a hand from the control yoke and pointed. “There’s the airport.” The Hawk banked and swept toward an expanse of foliage and bioform houses subdivided by green roadways. “Greenacres.” She settled back on her jumpseat and quietly, hoping that he would not look in his rearview mirror and notice, wiped her eyes. She had made her decision, and it was the right decision, but scent was famous for its power to evoke memories. And it would be nice if she could have her cake and eat it too, at least for a while.

  Her eyes dry, she peered again out the window. Greenacres was still visible to the left. They were descending toward a nearby neighborhood, older, filled with brick walkups, though its roadways were turfed, not paved. Gaps between the trees that flanked the roadways revealed concrete sidewalks.

  “I think this is the block we want.” The engine fell quiet. The wings cupped to seize the air and brake. The Hawk plummeted toward the ground, brushing the leaves of oaks and maples and elms and making them fly in swirling gusts. It touched the turf and ran a few steps. “There.” Bernie made it walk forward half a block before he pulled it to the curb that still marked the edge of the roadway and pushed at a recessed toggle switch. The bird bent its neck until it could tuck its head beneath the feathers of one wing. The movement hesitated when one great eye was even with them, blinking, staring as if reproachfully. “That will keep it out of trouble.”

  Bernie held the pod’s hatch while Emily squeezed out of her niche and jumped to the ground. Then he slammed it shut, and they looked at the three-story building before them. It was an old building, built of yellow brick and sandblasted until it glowed, though the grime of many decades remained visible in its cracks and pores. Its windows and doorways were framed with limestone; its woodwork had fairly recently been painted a rich, dark brown. The windows themselves were closed to keep out the growing heat of the day and keep in the cool of air-conditioning. Thick draperies concealed the rooms behind the glass wherever they could see. The mixed aromas of genimal manures wafted from the alleys that flanked the building to either side. It seemed obvious that behind the building, in its basement or at least quite nearby, were stables for the use of the tenants.

  “This is not,” said Bernie, “a poor neighborhood.”

  “It’s not a rich one either,” said Emily. She did not know why she felt impelled to defend Chowdhury against that hint of ill-gotten gains. She did not like him, and he had tried to kill her, after all. Was she really defending Neoform, her company? Or was it simply truth? The neighborhood was indeed a middle-class neighborhood, if a little toward the upper crust of the loaf.

  “Let’s see if he’s home.” Bernie led the way into the building’s entry. The inner door, just past a tier of mailboxes, was glass. Beside it was a speaker and a row of buttons, each one marked with a resident’s name. He pressed the one for Chowdhury.

  There was no answer.

  He tried another, and then another and another, until finally the speaker burst scratchily into a “Yes?”

  “Police. Buzz us in, please.”

  “Just a minute.” They heard a door close upstairs, and in a moment a woman—her hair short, gray, and unbrushed; her face round and wrinkled; her body wrapped in a faded bathrobe—ap
peared on the stairs inside. Bernie held up his wallet, with its badge exposed, in one hand. In the other, he displayed the warrant he had brought. The woman nodded and came the rest of the way to the door. “You can’t be too careful,” she said as she unlatched the door. “Who are you after?”

  “Thank you,” Bernie said as he pocketed his wallet again. He ignored the question.

  Emily glanced at the name list by the door. The helpful woman was apparently Mrs. Jasper, she looked retired, and she was obviously curious. Emily shrugged at her and followed Bernie up two flights of stairs and down a short hall. The doors she passed were painted in bright primary colors. The walls and carpets were more subdued in beige and brown.

  Emily stopped when she came to a door painted bright yellow. It bore both a knocker and a peephole, and Bernie was pressing a button that jutted from the wood of the door’s frame. She could hear the doorbell’s buzz within Chowdhury’s apartment.

  When there was no response, and no sound of movement from behind the door, Emily called, loudly enough to be heard within, “Ralph?” They waited a moment, and then Emily was startled by the clearing of a throat close behind her.

  She turned, and Mrs. Jasper said, “He’s home. I saw him come in just a little while ago.”

  She backed up abruptly when Bernie motioned for the two women to get out of his way. Then he drew his gun, stepped back, raised one leg, and delivered a heavy kick to the door beside the latch.

  The only result was a dark imprint of his shoe sole on the yellow paint. He might as well have kicked a cement wall. “Goddamn steel doors.” He tried again, harder, and again. On the fifth try, the wood of the frame gave way and the door popped open, only to reveal the chain of a security lock. A sixth kick tore that loose, left Bernie panting, and let them in.

  Bernie went first, the gun still in his hand. From behind him, Emily sniffed curry and seawater, saw bead curtains over the windows and grinning demons on the walls, and heard…nothing. Silence. Broken only by…

  A heavy armchair faced one corner of the room so that whoever sat in it could see both the wall on which the demon prints hung and a bookcase to the left. The bookcase carried photos, books, a small radio, and knickknacks. Irrelevantly, Emily thought the veedo must be in the bedroom.

  “There they are.” Bernie’s voice held a distinct note of satisfaction. His gun was pointing at a table to the right. On that table lay Chowdhury’s glasses, one lens fallen from the frame. He must, thought Emily, have set them down hard. Beside them was the disk case Chowdhury had been carrying when he fled the lab. Presumably, she thought as Bernie took one long step to seize it, it held evidence.

  On the floor at the foot of the bookcase was a tangle of tubing and apparatus that looked to Emily as if it had come from an aquarium. From the chair came the only sounds that broke the silence: the intermittent sough of breath, quietly hoarse, growing quieter.

  “What has Mr. Chowdhury done?” Mrs. Jasper tapped Emily on the shoulder. Emily looked at her, wrinkled her nose at the stale, sour scent of a bathrobe—or a body—that needed washing, and stepped into the apartment. She said, “Excuse me,” and closed the door. Then, remembering the now-broken latch, she leaned back against it. Bernie glanced at her, grinned mirthlessly, and stepped around the chair.

  “Shit!”

  Emily promptly left her post to see what he had found: Chowdhury, head back against the cushions of the chair, mouth open, breath now losing its struggle for life, an aquarium on his lap, one hand in the aquarium. Bernie lifted the hand from the water. It was clenched on and covered by a gelatinous mass of pastel blue and pink.

  There was a shriek behind them. He turned and pointed his gun at Mrs. Jasper, who had seized her opportunity to see what was going on. “Out!”

  She fled. Bernie turned back to Chowdhury and used the muzzle of his gun to pry the fingers open and scrape the jellyfish away from the human flesh. “Call the department,’ he told Emily. He recited the number. “Tell ‘em we need medics. A heroin overdose.”

  “I made them,” he was saying. His eyes were shut, and his face was beaded with droplets of sweat. He had to strain to speak, and his voice was hoarse. “Yes, I made them. They’re mine. Mine. I made them. I’m a genius. They said so. They’re mine!”

  Siren wailing, the pair of medics, one male, one female, had arrived before Chowdhury’s breath could gutter out. The younger medic had dashed up the stairs, a hypodermic in her hand, checked the signs, heard Bernie’s report of what the jellyfish had been designed to produce, and administered the antidote. Then, when Chowdhury had begun to gasp and spasm, she had said, nodding, “He’ll make it,” and gone to help her partner. Now they stood aside, their equipment—stretcher, defibrillator, blood dialyser, IV stands and bottles, drugs, all that they might need—stacked in cases beside their feet.

  Bernie had read Chowdhury his rights as soon as the dark-skinned man could respond to his name. Emily wondered whether he was in any state of mind to know what was going on, but there were witnesses to say that the formalities had been observed. She forced back tears of automatic, involuntary sympathy and told herself that, yes, he was a genius, she had said so herself, but…

  “Why did you make them?” Bernie had produced a small recorder from a pocket as soon as Chowdhury could talk. Now he held the machine close to the man’s lips, its microphone grill ready to capture whatever might emerge.

  “I had to.”

  “Why?”

  “Shoulda know’ better.” The voice tailed off, and the older, senior medic leaned forward, ready to intervene. But it strengthened again. “Owed ‘em money. Lost ‘tall.”

  “How?” Bernie’s voice turned sympathetic.

  “Gam’ling.” His voice slurred, and his chin fell forward onto his chest. Bernie gestured urgently, and the medic promptly slipped a needle into Chowdhury’s arm. He gasped as the drug took hold, and Bernie said, “Gambling?”

  Chowdhury gasped again. “They said, nettles…would pay it all. But then…wanted gen’als.”

  Genimals. Once, Bernie thought, that slurred word would have referred to the threat of agonizing torture. He nodded. “Why were you trying to kill Dr. Gilman?”

  There was a long pause. Chowdhury twisted in his seat. His face contorted. Then, “‘S white. Made funna, Armadons. But…wasn’t my idea.”

  “Whose idea was it?”

  He opened his eyes. When Emily and Bernie had first seen him that morning, they had been wide with panic. Now the pupils were contracted to pinpoints. The whites showed in a ring all around the brown irises. He stared at Bernie, looked past him to Emily, and then to the medics. He groaned, shivering. “Assassin,” he whispered. “Mack. Tortoise.” He looked back at Bernie. “Hawk. Wanted get rid of you. ‘Fraid you’d get me.” He paused. “Not Sparrow. He did that.”

  “Who?”

  “Baas. My boss. Gave me…chips.” The voice weakened again, and Emily laid a hand on Bernie’s arm. “Can’t this wait until he’s fully conscious? There’s no rush, is there?”

  He shrugged the shoulder above her hand, as if to shake her off. He turned his head to meet her gaze. “Whoever it is could get away. Or destroy evidence. Or try again, and this time he might be more successful. I wouldn’t want that.”

  He aimed his attention at Chowdhury once more, and Emily felt her skin turn pink with embarrassment, or shame. She had rejected him as too cruel, too hawkish, in favor of her meeker husband. She had not, perhaps, truly realized that there was a place for such personalities. And this was it. Only ruthless determination could possibly pry the truth from her erstwhile colleague, so nearly comatose, so nearly dead. If Bernie failed, then whoever was behind Chowdhury would indeed be free to try again. And next time she, Emily, might not survive. She shuddered at the thought.

  “Who is he?”

  “Had to ask for Hawk. Rest were…his idea.”

  “Who is your boss?” Bernie’s voice was louder, more insistent, as if he hoped to break through whatever resista
nce might be keeping the name concealed.

  Chowdhury’s grin was a death’s-head rictus. “Knew ‘bout debts. Drugs. Gave me orders.”

  “Who is he?”

  The grin faded as Chowdhury’s eyes dropped closed. He was still breathing, but when Bernie gestured for another injection, the medic refused. “He’s had it, Fischer. Save it for later.”

  “Shit.”

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  BERNIE AND EMILY stood on the walk, watching the two medics maneuver Chowdhury, on the stretcher, through the building’s doorway and into the Pigeon ambulance. The window of one second-story apartment was open now, its drapes pushed back to let Mrs. Jasper lean out, elbows on the sill, mouth half open in fascination. No one peered from the building’s other apartments, presumably because their tenants were at work, but small knots of gawking passersby had clustered near the mouths of the alleys to the stables.

  “So who’s the boss?” Bernie’s expression was a dissatisfied frown. Chowdhury had admitted that he was behind every case of sabotage except that of the Sparrow, though only under the duress of blackmail. Bernie recognized that the technique was classic, and that Chowdhury, if he could be believed, thus had some extenuation, some excuse, for what he had done. Bernie did believe him. Chowdhury had been near death and, once revived, barely able to speak at all. But he had spoken, and with a convincing air of sincerity.

  So perhaps Chowdhury had been as much a victim as anyone. That did not, could not, mean that the man would not stand trial. He remained responsible for what he had done, for whatever reason, whatever the consequences of refusing. Though the mystery boss’s crimes had been far greater. He—or she—had impelled Chowdhury, and had personally, directly caused all the many deaths of the Sparrow incident. Chowdhury had only destroyed two aircraft, one of them police department property, and killed, with the sabotaged Mack, far too many bystanders. Bernie snorted. Chowdhury was hardly an innocent. “Florin?”